I had the honor (and fun) or creating this quilt as a gift for a new baby.  It's made from his father's UM baseball shirt,  jacket, and his parent's wedding yarmulke.  The goal: create a baseball themed baby quilt for their newborn that worked with the nursery colors gray and white.  I think it turned out pretty fun, with a mix of clothing circles, and other circles resembling baseballs and umpire fabric.  It is both machine quilted and hand tied to add more pops of orange.  Hope the new parents and baby enjoy!

I can only imagine how difficult it must be to clean out the closet of a deceased loved one.  What makes this quilt so special is that a group of women helped streamline the process for their friend by taking (with permission) his collection of college t-shirts and turning them into a quilt for her.  The quilt combines his Florida State University shirts, his name on the bottom right corner, and an embroidered message from her friends on  the back.  I'm so glad to have played a part in this and hope the quilt brings a bit of comfort to her.        

Several years ago I made a quilt with this design for a little girl.  Now, I was lucky enough to make one for her younger sister.  This memory quilt is filled with onesies, pjs, and even a unicorn costume!  Her mom picked out hospital textiles and a few other recognizable items for the back.  Such a sweet family.  Repeat customers make this labor of love even more extra meaningful to me.  

It never ceases to amaze me how emotionally invested I become in projects without even knowing the people I am creating them for.  This has never been more true than it was for my most recent project.

​My client contacted me looking to have small wall hangings made for her niece and nephew of their mother's clothing.  Their mother had recently died of lymphoma (see foundation info below).  We based the design for each hanging off of one of the items listed in my Etsy shop but elaborated in order to incorporate as much clothing as possible. In addition, she sent me fabric photographs of the children with their mother to include and also requested  a hand embroidered quote that her sister would say to her children at bedtime each night.  

I sorted the clothing and decided which items to use in each hanging for the child's first initial, background, and border.  It's amazing how many articles of clothing and memories are packed into each mini quilt.  I truly hope that seeing these hanging on their walls each day will fill them with memories of happy times with their mother.  

To honor the memory of this special woman, her family has created a foundation to raise money for causes that were close to her heart.  I value many of these causes myself (education, arts, community) so I'm happy to share the link for any of you who are interested in supporting the Lisa Rego Horne Memorial Foundation.  Or follow along on the Facebook page 

This is a truly unique newborn baby gift because it's made for baby from mom and dad's meaningful clothing!  In this case, the birds are made from wedding and bar mitzvah yarmulkes and the wings are textiles with shared importance to the couple like fabric from their first apartment together.  The clothing bordering the birds is a combination of baby clothes, events, college and travel memories.  The baby's gender is a surprise so I worked hard to keep it as gender neutral as possible.

I'm not the most organized type A person so usually when tasked with hosting a baby shower I grin and bear it.  But everything changed when asked to help with my friend Samantha's shower.  The mom to be was hoping to have a onesie decorating station where guests could craft and create tiny clothes for the newborn.  I've seen this before with stencils and puffy paint and have always thought the results were less than desirable. There might be a few really cute ones but they'd be mixed in with a bunch of mess.  I decided to do a few things differently for this gender neutral shower activity.

Samantha is a pretty holistic, all natural person.  I thought it would look cute to have the clothes be different colors but I didn't want to use any harsh chemical dyes.  I decided to try dyeing with natural ingredients like vegetables, fruits, and flowers.  This site was a great resource.  I basically turned our kitchen into a science lab and created dye after dye 24/7.  I couldn't think of anything else and we ate really healthily that week so that I had a ton of onion skins and avocado pits to boil.  The bright yellow - turmeric!  How cool is that?

After the dyeing, I created a bunch of fabric applique shapes that people could adhere to the clothes.  I also lined  a bunch of fabric with adhesive paper so guests could create their own designs, which they did!  This activity, both the prep, and the day of, was so much fun. Samantha is thrilled that her babe will be outfitted for his/her first year and now I don't have to cringe when asked to host a shower.  

Some of my favorite quilts to make are quilts that will be gifted as a surprise.  This giant, queen sized, quilt was just given as a college graduation present.  It has approximately 50  (YES, 50!) t-shirts representing a ton of activities their son participated in since childhood.  My client was hoping for the main colors to be red, white, and blue.  Since so many of the shirts were white, I added red sashing, and blue binding.  It's quilted with a flame pattern to represent his current passion, race car driving.  I'm really pleased with the manly look we accomplished on this.  

Thanks to the family for sharing this awesome photo of the big reveal.